Portobello Road Coursework.

Authors Avatar

Portobello Road coursework

Task:-

Collect information and data to prove the hypothesis or to reject it.

Hypothesis:-

Portobello Road is going through a period of change.

Key questions that I will be asking myself when going there are: -

  1. What was Portobello Road like in the past?
  2. What is it like today?
  3. What changes have occurred?
  4. Why has Portobello Road changed and is it still changing?
  5. What do people think about these changes?

I have chosen these questions as I think they are the most relevant and useful in helping me answer the task.

A map of Portobello Road along with its whereabouts is shown on the next page.

Introduction:-

In 1739 Admiral Vernon captured the city of Puerto Bello in the Caribbean and this exploit gave rise to a number of commemorative names. One of these, Portobello Farm, in turn gave its name to Portobello Road, formerly the lane leading to it.

Portobello Road is essentially a Victorian street. It grew up, bit by bit, between the big estates of Notting Hill and Paddington in London’s great period of residential expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century; its shops and markets served the large houses on the estates. As the district at the northern end also developed, Portobello Road provided goods and services for the working people who lived in the surrounding terraces. By the late 1860’s, at a time when much of the road had been built, a market had sprung up selling fruit and vegetables. There were also pottery kilns in the area, and Mr John Whyte’s Hippodrome horse-racing course attracted some of the first traders to the area – who were gypsies dealing in horses and herbs. Portobello road is located in the North of Kensington (see figures 1 & 2)

By the end of the 1800s a long running battle over the extent of the market had begun between the authorities, street-traders and shop-keepers. In 1929 the first licence was officially granted. In 1948, after the closure of the Caledonian Market, antique dealers came there in large numbers followed by bargain hunters.

The boundaries of today’s market are much the same, except that Saturday mornings see the addition of antique stalls in the stretch of road between Westbourne Grove and Chepstow villas (refer to figures 6 & 7 for a better perspective of the location of the antique markets). The market falls roughly into three sections – in the south, antiques and bric-a-brac; in the centre, fruit and vegetables, and second-hand clothing, bedding and the like to the north. The trade in antiques has grown markedly in the last few years and as explained earlier, was stimulated by the temporary closure of the Caledonian Market in 1948.

In January 1961 there were some thirty-five antique dealers out of a total of 199 licence holders but this number has since increased. On Saturday mornings the southern half of the market is a great attraction to tourists and it is packed with bargain hunters and onlookers. Although most people know Portobello Market for its antiques, the food section should not be forgotten. This, probably the oldest part, serves a real local need and trade here is brisk throughout the week (see figure 26 for an example of a street market). Portobello Road is also lined with shops on both sides, many of these being long established businesses, and is no average shopping street.  

 

Figures 1 and 2: The location of Portobello Road.

Figures 1 and 2 above show the location of Portobello Road. Portobello Road is located in the Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea. At the north it adjoins with Wornington Road, towards the middle it passes under the Westway motorway, and towards the south the road ends at Pembridge Road.

Methodology:-

I visited Portobello Road on the 16th October 2002. The area which I was concentrating on was between the Westway motorway and Westbourne Grove. Firstly, I did the land use classification and the environmental quality survey. Then I did the questionnaire and the field sketch.

The data I collected when I did the land use classification was numerical at the start (see figures 6 & 7). I categorised the shops into one of many groups that I had and then I put that group number on the map so that I could keep a record of which shops were where. After I had done this I compared it to the land use classification of the area 20 years ago, in 1982 I coloured the shops that have changed or no longer exist, orange, on the 1982 map so that the changes can be seen clearly and compared with the 2002 map. On the 2002 map I have colour coded the shops so that the categories in which they fall can be clearly seen: refer to the data in the results section. I had problems in categorising some shops into particular groups as they sold more than one type of goods, so fitted into more than one category e.g. I came a shop that sold shoes, clothes and DIY products. Shops like these were difficult to categorise, so I put them under the group which I felt was most appropriate. Another problem that I encountered was that many shops were split into two whereas the space on the map showed that only one shop should be there. I over came this problem by simply dividing the space into two.

For the questionnaire I had both qualitative and quantitative data (see figures 10 & 11). I completed the sheet by simply ticking off the persons responses. I did the questionnaire by simply stopping passers-by and asking them to answer the questions. Nine people answered my questions. The questions I asked were not closed questions which mean that they do not force the person to agree with you i.e. the question was not biased or ‘one-sided’. Also the questions I asked were not too personal; asking for the age was quite personal, but I overcame this problem by making the age boundaries quite large so that the person didn’t feel too uncomfortable about putting themselves into an age group which would increase the likelihood of a truthful response. The more useful questions that I asked were in reference to the change in Portobello Road, for example, I asked them about how they thought Portobello Road had changed and how they felt about these changes. These questions were quite peculiar, as if the people answered ‘no’ to question 3 which asked whether they thought the road had changed, they couldn’t possibly answer the following questions as they have answered ‘no’ to any changes taking place in the first place. As 9 peoples responses aren’t enough to make a good, reliable conclusion, I combined my whole classes’ results; this gave a far larger questionnaire size of 84 people. The only problem that I had with the questionnaire was that some people were reluctant to answer the questions. What I did when I came across such a person was to apologise and to walk away and ask someone else.

Join now!

I carried out the environmental quality survey for areas 1 to 8. This assessed the overall quality of the area in the different quality fields. I didn’t only take Portobello Road’s situation into consideration; I took into account the quality of the surrounding areas too. The environmental survey was carried out by putting circles around the data that was most representative of the area on a scale of 1 to 5, on whether I found the area pleasant, clean, dirty etc; From this I drew a table of the results that I got – refer to figures 3, 4 ...

This is a preview of the whole essay